De vez em quando, o mundo do poker tem destas surpresas. Ainda hoje de manhã publicamos a notícia da vitória de José Girah Macedo no Lock Poker Bluff Pro Challenge e agora à tarde publicamos a sua desqualificação da leaderboard por multi-accounting.
O LockPRO Elite da Lock Poker e a mais recente sensação do poker nacional e internacional parece ter dado um passo em falso nesta competição e a marca acabou mesmo por desclassifica-lo.
A Lock Poker já se pronunciou sobre o assunto e emitiu o seguinte comunicado que publicamos na integra e no original:
"London, UK - May 4th, 2011 Lock Poker Disqualifies Jose Girah Macedo from the Bluff Pro Challenge for Multi Accounting
Lock is disappointed to announce that their new LockPRO ELITE team member, Jose "Girah" Macedo has been disqualified. Runner up Michael "bigguylegend22" Drummond, who earned over $90,000 in profit during the challenge, will take the prize. In audits of all participants' accounts at the close of the competition, violations of BPC rules as well as the Merge Gaming network rules were discovered. The violations with Girah's account included computers at multiple locations logging in and playing on his account. Lock's philosophy is built on player relationship and trust; any violation of fairness by any player is taken very seriously.
"Jose is young and he has made a big mistake here. We wanted to make sure that regardless of being a LockPRO he won this fair and square. After doing an audit of his account we have found that he broke some rules and that will not be tolerated by Lock," said Jennifer Larson CEO/Owner of Lock Poker. "We pride ourselves in standing for trust, legitimacy and loyalty. The truth is sometimes hard to stand by but it is the only way we can move forward. Although José won enough money from his own IP to have legitimately won the challenge, the unfortunate fact remains that breaking the rules is strictly disallowed. The fact remains Jose is an exceptional player and I firmly believe that mistakes only lead to greatness if learned from."
José Girah Macedo também já se manifestou sobre o assunto:
Hey everyone. This is sort of a crappy time for me to be writing a forum post, but I felt it was my responsibility to own up to everything that’s happened and take responsibility for the story, so bear with me. The press release was given out today by Lock Poker that I’ve been disqualified from the Bluff Challenge. As some of you who have been following the challenge may know, I ended up winning the Bluff Challenge with 104k in earnings.**Here’s the press release in its entirety:
*
Lock is disappointed to announce that their new LockPRO ELITE team member, José "Girah" Macedo has been disqualified. Runner up Michael "bigguylegend22" Drummond, who earned over $90,000 in profit during the challenge, will take the prize. In audits of all participants accounts at the close of the competition, violations of BPC rules as well as the Merge Gaming network rules were discovered with Girah account including a computer at a second location logging in and playing on his account. Lock's philosophy is built on player relationship and trust; any violation of fairness by any player is taken very seriously.
*
"José is young and he has made a big mistake here. We wanted to make sure that regardless of being a LockPRO that he won this fair and square. After doing an audit of his account we have found that he broke an important rule and that will not be tolerated by Lock" said Jennifer Larson CEO/Owner of Lock Poker. "We pride ourselves in standing for trust, legitimacy and loyalty. The truth is sometimes hard to stand by but it is the only way we can move forward. Although José won enough money from his own IP to have legitimately won the challenge, the unfortunate fact remains that breaking the rules is strictly disallowed. It nevertheless remains José is an exceptional player and I firmly believe that his mistakes only lead to greatness if he learns from them and himself moves forward."
*
"I'm deeply sorry for having broken the rules," said José, "but I truly had no intention of circumventing the rules in any way. Though it is no excuse, I want to be fully transparent at this point to let the poker world know what has happened and why. The computer in question was my backer, who logged into my account to check my balance and ended up playing some $25/$50 PLO while I was asleep and lost some money. Though on the merit of my own legitimate play I had enough winnings to win the Bluff Challenge, in light of the way things appear, I fully support and respect Lock's decision to disqualify me and hand over the challenge to the second place winner. Once again, I truly regret that all of this has happened the way it has, and I hope that I can win back the generous support and understanding of the players who have believed in me so far. I will be issuing a more comprehensive explanation of what happened on my blog. Thank you."
*
The unraveling of this whole event has been bizarre and overwhelming. Although I genuinely believed up until this whole thing exploded that I had won the challenge fair and square, I recognize that I have no choice but to accept full responsibility for breaking the rules. As I said before, I want to be fully transparent and let the poker world know exactly what happened and why so there is no question about what my actions and intentions were.
*
Since getting scammed for a large amount of money (I mentioned the event in my initial story), I decided to put away a lot of my earnings to secure my family and future. A few weeks ago, a backer approached me with a very generous stake and since it gave me a perfect opportunity to cash out my own money and put it away to protect my family, I gladly accepted. I wanted to rebuild myself and prove myself again to the poker world on my own terms.
My backer had access to my account, since of course in backing, transparency and accountability are very important. I trusted my backer, so I had no problem with this. Well, what ended up happening is one night, he logged into my account to check my balance, and then ended up deciding to play a $10/$20 and $25/$50 PLO session. I was asleep at the time. He ended up losing some money and then quitting, and the next day he informed me of his loss. I shrugged it off, and kept on playing and doing my thing. I did not think anything of it at the time.
Now as all of these events come to a head, I see that I must take responsibility for the breaking of the rules, no matter what intentions or magnitude behind them. This is part of being a man and owning up to the situation. I apologize greatly to the poker world for what has happened and fully congratulate the second place winner on his reception of the Bluff Challenge prize. But I want to reiterate, as some people have doubted me – I have not colluded or chipdumped in any way, and no one played on my account for me and won money toward the challenge. To me such actions are absolutely inexcusable and I would never do such a thing, to win a challenge or anything else. I will stand tall next to the mistakes I have made and own up to them, but nevertheless I will defend what were my legitimate winnings during the course of the Bluff Challenge. I do not believe that I deserve to win it, but I do believe that the reality of what happened should be respected.
I have attached to this post a couple of images. I have included all of the hands that I have played on Lock including from this month, in the interest of full transparency so I can show everything. The first is a screenshot from my backer of the hands he played on my account. The second is my own screenshot of my total winnings since I’ve played on Lock Poker, including this month, since some people have doubted the veracity of my play. I hope that this transparency will resolve any uncertainty.
In conclusion, I just wanted to say that I am deeply sorry that all of this has happened and that I have let down the people who supported me and showed me their love. I do not intend to let something like this happen again. Yes, I am young, I’m only 18 so I can be a bit stupid sometimes, but I nonetheless take full responsibility for my mistakes and will do my best in the future that people will be able to place their trust in me as a poker player. I apologize for everything that I have done, and I hope that I will be able to prove myself again to my supporters as trustworthy and deserving of the love that they have given me.
*
Jose
No site da sala já se pode ver a leaderboard devidamente actualizada com Michael "bigguylegend22" Drummond na primeira posição e André Wade Santos agora em segundo lugar.
04/05/2011
19:29
